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What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

jacquescorbytuech.com

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Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#351

Post by samuelec »

leonidasv wrote: post #222
tambeb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notification categories are like mailing lists now. You may have unsubscribed from the daily deals email but you're still going to be auto subscribed to every new slightly modified category in perpetuity. Unless you fully disable notifications for an app (in Android at least, in my experience), new enabled by default notification categories are added all the time.

When they exist at all. Many apps that provide important notifications (like delivery tracking, drop-off time etc) put them under the same category as marketing stuff. You can't have just the transactional tracking, you have to opt-in for the marketing notifications as well.

I had to disable from Android settings all LinkedIn notifications. I check it from time to time but I haven't missed anything, nowadays LinkedIn is mostly garbage

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#352

Post by 1718627440 »

miki123211 wrote: post #340
1718627440 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps can know whether you granted permission?? That sounds like a security flaw.

This is basically required for clueless (and even not so clueless) users. If there's a chat app I installed 3 years ago, with no intention of giving it camera access, and I suddenly need to use that app for a video call, I don't want to be stuck debugging broken camera issues for two hours. I'd much rather have the app tell me that it doesn't have camera access.

The OS could tell you instead. If it is a camera app, the OS could tell you on install, that you can't start the app without given camera access, because that's what the app is.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#353

Post by MarleTangible »

derefr wrote: post #238
lanerobertlane wrote: post #24

If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…

You're conflating "push notifications" with "being alerted about push notifications." I have many "important but not urgent" apps on my phone configured to just silently add their push notifications into iOS's notification center. With an app configured to do notifications like this, no banner shows up at the time the app's notifications are delivered; and these notifications don't even show up visibly on the lock sc…

Just curious, what do you do with the increasing number of companies that use push notifications as a form of advertising venue, and how do you differentiate the security warning notification from your camera app from their special weekly annual sale notification?

The marginal cost of each notification is so low that companies simply spam users nonstop, and their A/B tests shows that the revenue is increasing. What's being lost though is that we're getting more and more agitated with these brands and their uncapped malicious behaviors. This is also true with their UI and UX as well, they keep adding banners with incredibly small close buttons, because someone will continue with the shopping after accidently missing the tiny button, and that's an added sale, who cares about 99% of users who are fuming with dissatisfaction, what are they going to throw away their $200-300 smart home device because companies abuse them?

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#354

Post by mrbombastic »

mcdonje wrote: post #319

The entire architecture here is surprising to me. >an iPhone could not afford to let every installed application maintain its own background poll against a remote server. The proposal...a single persistent TLS connection from each device to Apple, over which any registered third party could deliver alerts. I thought apps were sending notifications locally in the device. Like, if a messaging app receives a message, th…

yeah this is what author hints at with "Push as a battery problem". Apps are limited by default in what they can do in the background due to this, so most apps are in a suspended state not making network calls when you are not using them. To avoid the app having to keep running this stuff is delegated to OS which tells the app, "hey I have a push for you wake up and handle it!" You can send pushes locally but because of the background limitation it is not practical for unpredictable events like messages coming in.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#355

Post by epicide »

al_borland wrote: post #125
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #103

I’m constantly amazed how passive people are with things that steal their attention My phone is in do not disturb mode 24/7. If your app notifies me about something pointless, it gets deleted and I start using your website instead I have a mail rule that moves any email with the word “unsubscribe” out of the inbox into its own tagged area. Every few days, I go in and unsubscribe to everything that’s arrived. Whenever…

With the retailer asking for a phone number, I don’t see how it would ever be worth even entertaining. They will give you a discount once, then have and potentially abuse your information for years to come.

That's precisely why I don't ever accept the bribe. If I don't like the non-discounted price, then I don't buy it. Now they neither get the data nor the sale.

What's frustrating is that a lot of grocery stores do this. If you sell something absolutely necessary, such as basic foods, you should not be allowed to do the whole "mark it up to mark it down" strategy.

Also, a tip for most grocery stores (at least in the US): enter in any area code plus 867-5309. Chances are high that somebody has registered it. It's better than sharing with a family member because so many people are using it, the data becomes less useful.

Alternatively, ask the clerk to "use the store card". Usually, they will oblige.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#356

Post by thanksobama »

Whatever has replaced the Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act informs the architecture of the Apple Push Notification, Firebase Cloud Messaging, etc. Apple owns the persistent connection to every iPhone, and only APNs can wake your app. So "self-hosting" here means running your own provider (the backend that decides what to send and hands it to APNs) instead of paying a third party like Firebase Cloud Messaging, OneSignal, or Pusher to do that for you. The last mile is never yours however. Any architecture that routes everyone's traffic through a small number of identity-aware intermediaries is, by construction, a bulk-metadata collection system waiting for a legal instrument.

[2] In December 2023 Senator Ron Wyden disclosed that the U.S. government and foreign governments had secretly compelled Google and Apple to turn over information from push notifications, including communications metadata and sometimes content. A detail that should bother any developer: app developers have no way to stop the practice if they want to send notifications on the platforms iPhones and Android rely on. Apple had been gagged from disclosing it until the program became public, after which it said it was updating its transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests. So the architectural hypothesis isn't speculative — it's the confirmed mechanism, differing from Section 215 mainly in domain (apps vs. calls) and legal vehicle (ordinary subpoenas, FISA orders, and NSLs rather than the specific business-records theory of §215)

[1] "Its just metadata". Thanks Obama! (joking of course, no single individual is responsible for these things, it is our collective political will and its the best we can do unfortunately)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUdm0QMDM0 [2] https://epic.org/sen-wyden-reveals-government-surveillance-o...

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#357

Post by epicide »

lionkor wrote: post #274

Turn off all notifications except messaging and see how your day goes. It's not going to kill you. You quickly get used to regularly checking things you actually care about, and the rest has to wait until YOU care. I've been doing this for many years, and none of my friends or colleagues are aware of it, and they don't need to be. Notifications don't help you respond quickly, they just grab your attention from things…

> You quickly get used to regularly checking things you actually care about, and the rest has to wait until YOU care.

This was the biggest thing for me. Before, I was paranoid that if I turned off notifications, I'd miss something important. As though I didn't miss notifications anyway.

Getting used to regularly checking (important) things also has two wonderful side effects (at least it did for me):

* My "mental notification system" got better. Because I was less dependent on my phone doing it for me, I developed the skill more on my own. * The apps and services that I checked less and less frequently became more obvious in how unimportant they were to me altogether. I have far fewer apps and accounts now, making me MORE punctual overall.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#358

Post by mcdonje »

mrbombastic wrote: post #354
mcdonje wrote: post #319

The entire architecture here is surprising to me. >an iPhone could not afford to let every installed application maintain its own background poll against a remote server. The proposal...a single persistent TLS connection from each device to Apple, over which any registered third party could deliver alerts. I thought apps were sending notifications locally in the device. Like, if a messaging app receives a message, th…

yeah this is what author hints at with "Push as a battery problem". Apps are limited by default in what they can do in the background due to this, so most apps are in a suspended state not making network calls when you are not using them. To avoid the app having to keep running this stuff is delegated to OS which tells the app, "hey I have a push for you wake up and handle it!" You can send pushes locally but because…

What you're describing seems reasonable, but it doesn't align with what I quoted, unless I'm missing something, which I very well could be.

Having apps sleep and a daemon wake them to handle notifications doesn't require all of the notifications coming from Apple.

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#359

Post by bpicolo »

al_borland wrote: post #119
dylan604 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat has to be the all time worst offender to me about abusive level of notifications. Luckily, you can turn them off, but holy cow batman, that's a lot of notification options to deal with.

For me the worst is NextDoor. I don’t have the app installed, but they also have email notifications. There are seemingly 100 options and I turned them all off when I first made the account. Periodically they add new ones and auto-enable them for everyone. There is not universal way to shut them off, short of blocking them all together or deleting my account. The account was such a pain to setup that I’m hesitant to…

Yep, I straight up deleted my Nextdoor. Nextdoor itself is spammy and ad ridden. And most of the content in the community is also just spam anyway.

My neighborhood has a WhatsApp. I engage with it if I feel like it. Works great

Re: What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications

#360

Post by jve »

nottorp wrote: post #263
lanerobertlane wrote: post #24

If my phone interrupts me, it should either mean someone genuinely needs my attention right now or it should not be disrupting me at all. That's my notification set up. Apps allowed to receive push notifications Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, Apple Health, [brand] bank. That concludes the list. There is no reason any other app needs to be able to instantly ping me. Most apps are not notifying you because something matter…

Health? Why, are you worried you'll miss the notification that you have a heart attack? As for Whatsapp, maybe you're not in enough group chats that you still allow notifications...

You can mute group chats in whatsapp.
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